BILL ANALYSIS
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Senate Research Center |
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AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT
Currently, most local housing authorities are required to have at least one tenant commissioner on their board to represent the interest of residents. These individuals are volunteers with limited prior experience who must learn complex federal, state, and local housing issues that run the gamut from finance to civil rights.
Tenant commissioners and local housing authorities dedicate much of their time and money to train persons to become effective commissioners. Term limits cause tenant commissioners to be replaced just as they fully understand their responsibilities, replacing these now fully trained individuals when they are at their most effective. Tenant commissioners are the only commissioners subject to these term limits and are required to leave and be replaced just as they become most efficient in their positions.
H.B. 654 removes the term limits currently imposed only on tenant commissioners of local housing authorities. The bill will give tenant commissioners parity with their colleagues. All housing authority commissioners will then be equally subject to serve at the will of the presiding officer of the governing body (i.e., the mayor).
H.B. 654 amends current law relating to the ability of a tenant representative to serve as a commissioner of a local housing authority.
RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
This bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, institution, or agency.
SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS
SECTION 1. Repealer: Sections 392.0331(f) (relating to prohibiting a commissioner appointed under this section from serving more than two consecutive two-year terms) and (f-1) (relating to providing that Subsection (f) does not apply to a municipality that has a municipal housing authority in which the total number of units is 150 or fewer), Local Government Code.
SECTION 2. Provides that the repeal by this Act of Sections 392.0331(f) and (f-1), Local Government Code, applies to a commissioner appointed under Section 392.0331 (Appointment of Tenant Representative as Commissioner of Municipal, County, or Regional Housing Authority), Local Government Code, without regard to whether the commissioner was appointed before, on, or after the effective date of this Act.
SECTION 3. Effective date: upon passage or September 1, 2013.